Secret behind the sliding door: Family's legacy became San Francisco's most coveted recipe

SAN FRACISCO -- A family fled Vietnam in 1975 with nothing and went on to create one of San Francisco's most iconic dishes. At Crustacean SF, the legendary garlic noodles are made behind a locked, sliding-door kitchen so secret that even the owner's husband waited 15 years to get inside.

Crustacean, the upscale offshoot of Thanh Long, the legendary San Francisco Vietnamese restaurant famous for its garlic noodles, has relocated to swankier digs in the city's Financial District, but it retains one of Thanh Long's signature back-of-house features: the secret kitchen.

"If there's going to be garlic noodles, if there's going to be Dungeness crab dishes, there has to be a secret kitchen," says Crustacean owner Monique An, as she lifts up a sliding metal door, revealing steaming plates of the signature dishes, while a back door simultaneously shuts closed, hiding the secret kitchen behind it.

Monique is the third generation of Thanh Long's legacy. Her grandmother, Diana An, turned an Italian deli into a Vietnamese restaurant in 1971, and in 1975, following the fall of Saigon, Diana's son brought his wife Helene and their three daughters from Vietnam. It was in Thanh Long's kitchen where Helene began quietly revolutionizing Vietnamese cuisine even without knowing it.

"She was a chef, and she didn't realize it, but she was creating this spectacular dish that became so popular," Monique says. In a city where Vietnamese food was still largely unfamiliar to diners, Helene tapped her experience with French and Chinese cuisine that was a fixture in her childhood, and experimented with flavors that appealed to a broader palate. "She was able to make success with being unwavering with her vision."

That vision produced two dishes that would define the restaurant's identity: roast Dungeness crab and the now-legendary garlic noodles. Their appeal was so magnetic that curious guests would sneak glances into the kitchen on their way to the bathroom. Helene's solution? Conceal the magic entirely. "My mother decided, let's close off the kitchen. Let's just make a separate kitchen," says Monique.

The recipes became so guarded that even Kenneth Lew, Monique's husband and co-owner, wasn't allowed into the secret kitchen until 15 years into their relationship. "Too many years," Kenneth recalls with a laugh.

The mystique paid off. When Crustacean opened in 1991, a food critic penned a piece declaring the garlic noodles "worth marrying for," and the city took notice. "People start(ed) coming from all over the Bay Area because they have to taste these garlic noodles," Monique says. "It was such a fun, well-written article."

Now relocated to a sleek new space at 195 Pine St., Crustacean carries on with Helene still in the kitchen full-time at 80. For Monique, the responsibility is profound. "She found her voice through cooking," she says. "There's intention and heart behind the dishes that we're sharing."

For more information, visit https://www.crustaceansfpine.com./